"After the Storm": A Movie for You; Someone Who Has Not Become the Ideal One

As people age, they tend to become more accepting, including accepting themselves as they deviate from the idealized person they once were in their youth. As a teenager, he constantly reminded himself not to follow in his father's gambling footsteps. However, he ended up struggling to manage his family and eventually divorced, unable to even pay alimony. At fifty, Shinoda is tall and disheveled, appearing even more desperate. He steals food and searches for cash at his elderly mother's house, resembling a middle-aged loser who neglects himself.

The story is straightforward: Shinoda, frustrated by his unfulfilled dreams of becoming a novelist; Shinoda's ex-wife, who still harbors feelings but marries someone else for financial stability; Shinoda's mother, trying to live positively after her husband's passing; and Shinoda's son, growing up confused yet calm. On a typhoon day, these four gather under one roof, tentatively facing each other sincerely, but that's all. When dawn breaks, they all return to their old lives, unchanged.

Despite its small scale, the story is brimming with delicate emotions. The homemade ice cream that freezes hard in his mother's home, the son's smile when praised by his grandmother, Shinoda pretending to be strong by buying spiked shoes for his child and purposely scratching them to reduce the price, the picnic under the slide during the typhoon, the family searching for lottery tickets in the storm, and the hint of nostalgia beneath his ex-wife's cold exterior.

Hirokazu Koreeda, as always, focuses his camera on an ordinary family, this time a divorced one. The characters in the film lead lives that viewers might find poignant, yet they persevere with faint hopes: the mother, financially strained and lonely, still takes the time to learn music; Shinoda can earn rent and maintenance fees by writing scripts for comics, yet he yearns to create works entirely his own; the son cannot often see his biological father, but he is not lacking in love or attention from him. Despite still having feelings for Shinoda, the ex-wife makes what she considers to be the right decision based on reason.

Why can't these good people live happily together? The seemingly carefree mother cautiously asks her ex-wife about getting back together on a night of a typhoon, only to be gently declined with a smile. “There is no going back." These are the unspoken words of the ex-wife. This is life, where a small mistake, a slight imperfection, can lead to vastly different outcomes. Those moved in the cinema may feel more or less of such a feeling of reluctance.

Not everyone can achieve their superhero dreams. People admire those in the spotlight because they are the few who have achieved their dreams. If you can't return to your glorious past or haven't achieved anything noteworthy yet, life goes on. This is the bitterness of life, but it also motivates people to move forward. In a sense, "After the Storm," which seems like nothing has happened, resonates more with and is closer to every ordinary person than other films with a clear beginning, middle, and end.

An unsatisfactory life still has meaning. Just like the plant on mom's balcony - "it hasn't bloomed or produced fruit, but it's still useful." Who says warmth in life isn't a gift? With the melody of Hanaregumi's "Take a Deep Breath," the film draws to a close. People always ask children what their dreams are, and Shinoda is no exception. The son looks up and asks: Dad, do you have a dream?

"Dad's dream hasn't come true yet."

Well, it's just "not come true yet."